Dreams of God
by Bryony
Summary: Duo and Hilde try to sleep, make out a little, and talk religion.


_standard disclaimers apply._

A/N: This has ended up being very Duo-centric, which is a shame because when I sat down to write I wanted to take a crack at getting Hilde in character. Sheesh. Anyway, a very (very) long time ago I started a story called Voice of God, which I never finished, big surprise. I guess this is a prequel to that, but given I was a teenager when I wrote most of it I wouldn't necessarily recommend hurrying over to read it! And yes, there's also a needless reference to my other dumb story Duo and the Whale. At least that one's a little bit more upbeat! Really, I'm just pleased to be in a position to post something for the first time in more than a year. I've been writing, just not able to finish anything; and there's the usual "everything I touch is terrible!" nonsense. But here we go, hopefully this will signal the start of another productive year in fanfiction. :P

 **Dreams of God**

by Bryony

It was the dream again.

There was a being in the dream, a being that Duo knew to be an angel, although it didn't look like what you might expect from the pictures of angels you saw all your life. It had no wings. No golden halo. It was hard to explain quite what it looked like, and in his dream Duo knew that what he saw wasn't even the angel's true form; it was only what his mind could comprehend.

It was not a solid thing of flesh and blood. It was like… a rainbow, but not. Duo could somehow see all of the colors and all the spectrums of light making up the angel, distinct and yet not at the same time. It was, in a sense, light incarnate.

It spoke to him, as it always did. Duo cowered on the ground. The angel's voice was terrible: it spoke to him with the voices of Father Maxwell, of Sister Helen, and of Solo, but not as they ever were in life. Now they were huge. Bigger than big. He could hear all three of them at once, but not as three voices speaking in unison; each, somehow, remained distinct. These were the voices of his sweetest dreams and his worst nightmares. The angel did not speak with lungs and lips and tongue. Duo had the sense that it made its voice sound only in his own head. And when it did, it took up his whole skull. In the moments of its speech, there was nothing else. Duo was obliterated. There was only the angel's word.

What the angel said to him was: "You are needed. You are being called. Rise up."

* * *

Duo didn't want to rise up. He wanted to sleep, and live in sin with his girlfriend, not spend his nights arguing with God's errand boy. He could think like that, be blasphemous like that, now that he was awake and trembling under the covers, back in the real world. He could still feel it, though, a weak but steady pulse in his head, painful and relentless as a coming migraine, or a bruise, demanding to be prodded just to see if it's still sore. He'd fall into it if he wasn't careful.

The voice of God, keeping him awake again. What a joke.

"Why don't you just shut up," he muttered to the night. There was no talking back in the dreams, which made it all the more tempting to start yelling now. But he couldn't do that, not when there was a warm, sleeping body lying beside him. What he needed was a distraction. He needed that warm, sleeping body to distract him.

He rolled in closer to Hilde, reached out to wrap an arm around her and spoon her close. "Babe," he breathed into her ear, "Hey. Babe." She made a muffled noise of protest, landing an inadvertent elbow to his ribs as she tried to twist away. "Come on, Hil," he wheedled, burying his face in the crook of her neck and breathing in the muggy, nighttime scent of her.

"Du-o," she groaned as she drifted back to wakefulness, drawing out his name into an irritable yawn. Success.

"Yeah, babe?" he said, as innocently as he could while he moved to take her earlobe into his mouth and nibbled at it gently. She squirmed again in protest. Reluctantly, he released her ear, and she twisted round in his arms to aim a mock glare in his direction.

"You are _such_ a clown," she accused.

He grinned at her until she couldn't help it and grinned back. "Ah, it's only because I know you have such a thing for them."

"Get lost!" she told him, laughing.

No one looked at him like Hilde did, her eyes so warm and full of trust. She looked at him like it would never in her life occur to her that he might be able to let her down. It made him swell with pride at the same time it made him want to wet himself with terror. How were people supposed to live with that kind of pressure? Then again, now he'd had a taste of it, how would he ever live without it, either?

"Mmm…" He let his hand drift down to cup her warm belly, then moved in to nuzzle at one of her tiny breasts through the t-shirt that she slept in. "I can't help myself," he told her - as best he could with his mouth full. "You're just so tasty…"

She shivered against him, pliant under his hands and mouth, sleepily murmuring his name in encouragement from time to time. Not that he needed any extra motivation. This was how Duo wanted to lose himself: Forget nightmares that may or may not be real. Forget God. Forget the lure of the dead. He'd remind himself he was still living.

Hilde held him close, eyes closed, a tiny smile on her face, close to drowsing again. He kept his hand on her belly, under her t-shirt, felt it rise and fall with the rhythm of her breath. He liked the softness there, practically the only bit of softness to be found on Hilde's body. She was built like a teenage boy, still, even now, all flat lines and sharp bones ready to accidentally jab him if he approached her wrong. Sometimes, just sometimes, he'd think longingly of someone fuller-figured, with all the squeezable round curves of his imagination. Still, since she left the military, Hilde had lost the six-pack abs of basic training, fattened up just enough to develop the tiniest of pot-bellies. She didn't understand his affection for it, seeming to find it half amusing, half grotesque the way he liked to touch it. But it was just about the only curve on her, so excuse him if he found it attractive. It was a comforting thing to hold onto, late at night.

"Hey, Hil," he whispered, half hoping she wouldn't hear him, or answer with a snore, "you believe in God?"

"Me? Mmm…well I guess so."

"You _guess_ so? That's not much of an answer."

Even half asleep, she still found the energy to sock him one in the arm. "What do you want me to say, then? I don't know. How come you've never asked me before if you care so much?"

"Ehh, it's probably nothing. I just keep having all these dreams lately, you know?"

"Oh…you mean about the war?" She sounded a bit more alert now. Guess he only had himself to blame for that. He grunted non-committally. She stroked a hand down his back. "Why don't you tell me about them? Maybe it'll help."

"Aw, Hil…" Did he have to sound so petulant? "I don't want to get you wrapped up in all that."

"They're just _dreams_ , Duo, there's nothing for me to get wrapped up _in_."

"You know what I mean."

"Not really. Not without you telling me."

He sighed, buried his face back in the pillow of her breast. She smelled like fresh sweat, and he just wanted to lick the salt off of her body. "Knock it off!" she yelled at him when he decided to try. "Come on, Duo, be serious here."

He flopped back onto his side of the bed, protesting, "I am!" Damn it, even staring up at the ceiling in a darkened room, he could feel her looking at him. "You don't ever feel like God speaks to you, then."

"You mean, like…those moments when you suddenly notice how beautiful things are?" He didn't have the heart to tell her no. "I get those sometimes. Whenever I see the view of Earth from a shuttle - you just think, wow. Everything's just so…vast, and we're all so small. But there's so much beauty in it, too. I guess that can feel like God speaking to me. Or you know, something spiritual anyway."

"Yeah. Right."

It was a long time since he'd felt what Hilde was talking about, if he'd ever felt that way at all. In her mind, God was full of beauty and love and creation. That was the way nice people saw God. It was a far cry from the God he knew, the one that liked to smite down disbelievers, or purge the Earth with angry floodwaters. A far cry from the God of Death. Ah, what was the point. All this talk was just making him feel more alone. He should have known Hilde wouldn't understand.

"What's it like for you? Duo?"

He blew out a long _pfff_ of air, resigning himself. "I guess…it's like I'm being called to action or something. I thought, after that little girl, I was _done_. Out. But lately…I get the feeling there's more to be done. A lot more. And for some reason, I've gotta be the one to do it."

"You mean…joining Preventers?"

He shrugged.

That wasn't what he meant.

"I mean, I've gotta rise up."

"Rise up? What do you mean…rise up _how_?" There was a note of indignation in Hilde's voice, which he knew was covering up for fear. Fear he'd caused.

He rolled over to meet her eye and grinned, admitting, "I don't know yet."

That broke the tension. "Jerk." She smiled with relief and gave him a playful shove before settling down with her head nestled on his chest.

"Heh. That's me." Yeah, that was him. If he went down this road, Hilde was never going to look at him the same way again. So much for the trust in her eyes. So much for not letting her down. So much for all that. But he knew what happened to prophets who tried to run from God instead of doing as they were told. He grew up on all those stories. "Hey, Hil… I ever tell you about the time I almost got eaten by a whale?"

She scoffed into his chest. "Get real."

Man, what he wouldn't give for this to not be real.


End file.
